Free And Pro
Free covers reading and a real amount of everything else, and Pro removes the ceilings.
One paid tier exists, it costs $12 a month or $120 a year, and that is the whole price list: no second tier, no per-course pricing, no credits to buy, and no one-off purchase. Free is a working app and not a trial, and it never expires, so an account staying free stays useful indefinitely. What a subscription buys is the removal of ceilings and not access to features, because a free learner and a subscriber meet exactly the same app and one of them is being counted, so the only decision in front of you is whether the Free caps are enough for how you want to work.
The allowances in full
Free tier available. Pro plan at $12/month or $120/year — start at golo.co.
| What | Without an account | Free account | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading the textbook | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Tapping a word for a definition | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Practice questions per module | A handful | One hundred | Unlimited |
| Study plan, level and gems | None | Yes | Yes |
| Live spoken conversations | None | Three a week | Two hundred a month |
| Typed turns in chat and scenarios | None | Seven a week | Unlimited |
| Short audio played | None | Ten a week | Unlimited |
| Anything longer than a phrase read aloud | None | None | Unlimited |
| Dictating into a typed conversation | None | None | Unlimited |
| Generating a module, quiz, scenario, course or word set | None | One a week of each | Unlimited |
No account is required for the textbook, the dictionary, and a few practice questions per module. A free account unlocks progress tracking and a weekly allowance across speaking, audio, generation, and the AI assistant. Pro lifts those allowances and adds dictation, the natural voice, and audio longer than a phrase.
Why those things and not others
What is metered is what costs money to serve every time somebody uses it, meaning spoken conversation, typed turns, audio, and generating new content. Reading is not metered, because serving a page already generated costs approximately nothing and capping it would make the app worse for no saving, and that is also why nothing is locked away on Free for its own sake: you meet every feature.
How the allowances are pooled
What counts as one use
The meter sits on the action rather than on the conversation. A typed turn is one message you send, and it is charged whether you send it in a chat with Loco or inside a scenario, while a live spoken conversation is charged when the connection opens, and reconnecting to one you already opened costs nothing, so a scenario you come back to does not spend a second one.
Whether you need it
If you are reading the textbook and answering practice questions, Free is genuinely enough and you should not pay for this. If you are working seriously on fluency, the three-scenario cap is the one you will hit first, usually in the second week, because Your Level is telling you correctly that scenarios are what move you.
The honest comparison
Pro buys you more of the most effective activity in the app, and everything else it unlocks is secondary. Twelve dollars a month sits a long way below one hour of private lessons, which is the comparison that matters, and Free exists precisely so you can find out whether the app suits you first.
Changing or cancelling
Both are on your account page, neither involves talking to anybody, and Managing Your Subscription walks through it. A cancellation keeps Pro running until the end of the period you have paid for, and then drops you back to Free with your account, your history and your level estimate intact, so a cancelled account is a free account and not a closed one. If you want everything removed, that is a different operation and Your Data describes it.